What ?
Companies in Austria have to pay a fine of up to 100.000€ if they employ a foreigner with a wage lower than that was bargained with the Austrian unions. Therefore the companies will think twice about employing foreign slave workers, because otherwise the KIAB will show up.
Unfortunately, in the United States the legal incentives are structured to favor employing a foreigner.
This was a big topic here in Austria over the past year, because in May of this year the Austrian labor market was opened to the workers of Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004, such as Hungary, Poland, Slovakia etc.
The Right (FPÖ, BZÖ) has already fumed about this and warned that there would be an invasion of Eastern European workers and company owners into Austria. Therefore the Austrian SPÖVP government introduced much tougher controls to prevent wage-dumping by foreigners who set up companies in Austria, take in foreign workers to work for them and pay them lower wages than what was bargained with the unions.
The government also put into law that foreigners who want to open up a business in Austria will have to file their company records only in German, so that the authorities can check if foreign workers are paid the wages that Austrian citizens receive.
Because there are certainly many foreigners out there who want to start a business here and think: "Hey, lets hire some Polish folks who work for 1000€ a month on a construction job, instead of the 2500€ an Austrian worker gets, because in Poland he gets only 500€ for the same job."
Therefore the KIAB (control agency to prevent illegal work) has increased the raids recently and was given the power to detain illegal and underpayed workers as well as impose fines of 100.000€ (or in repeat cases 250.000€) to the companies that violate the bargaining laws.
The KIAB can also sue the companies with permission of the Finance Ministry, so that the company basically goes bankrupt. In effect, labor corruption and wage-dumping are now fairly low here.
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Like I said above, the Right has warned that there will be an invasion of Eastern European workers after the labor market was opened on May 1, 2011.
There wasn't really an "invasion", but foreign job growth or job growth in general was really strong here in Austria.
A total of 61.500 new jobs (without self-employed) were created between July 2010 and July 2011, which is an increase to the total employment of 1.8%.
Out of these 61.500 new jobs, 40.000 were foreigners and 21.500 were Austrian citizens.
You have to know that out of the total number of dependent employed people (3.501.000) foreigners made up 507.000 in July 2011.
In July 2010, foreigners made up 467.000 out of 3.440.000 dependent employed people.
This further means that foreign employment in Austria over the past year increased by 8.6%, while the employment of Austrian citizens only increased by 0.7%
Much of this has to do with advertising campaigns such as in Budapest where huge billboards say "50000 free jobs available in Austria" and so on.
But at least, contrary to what the FPÖ/BZÖ propaganda says, the invasion has not taken place so far and a steady stream of Eastern European workers into Austria is not really that bad but actually preferable, because many of them are women who are working in nursing homes and are taking care of the ever-increasing mass of older people - jobs Austrian women won't do anymore, because they get higher paid jobs. So what do you think are the Hungarian and Slovak and Czech women doing ? Staying at home with no chance for work or if they find work get 200€ a month, or drive 100-500km into Austria where they get 1500€ a month even for a "lower" job with free health care and 6 weeks of paid holidays ?
